The Bleeding Land (27 page)

‘Good open ground and rising up towards the village,’ Preston answered, playing along, glancing round from his saddle and taking in what he could of the undulating terrain in the dim dusk light. ‘Only a few small spinneys by the looks. Enough for firewood but nothing for our enemies to hide in.’

‘Plenty of fresh water too,’ Lieutenant Hyde put in eagerly. ‘Yonder brook runs back to the river and there’s likely to be more like it.’

‘I agree, Lieutenant,’ Captain Preston said. ‘In the morning we should have a good view of the surrounding land from the manor and the church tower.’

‘The ancient boundaries of the village were set out in the charter of King Eadwy in the year of Our Lord nine hundred and fifty-six,’ Tromp announced, ‘by which he gave the village to an Earl Æfhere.’ It was a riposte to which Captain Preston seemingly had no answer.

But Matthew Penn did. ‘You see, nothing has changed, not in all these years,’ he said. ‘The King makes rich men richer, gives his fool-born foot-licking friends and retainers the pie while the rest of us make do with the crumbs.’

This got some ayes and a few curses by way of agreement and the fat quartermaster went to great efforts to twist round in his saddle to get a look at the man who had spoken the much-welcomed sedition.

‘That was neatly put, young man,’ Tromp said, staring at Tom, the whites of his eyes glowing dully by the light of the half moon that had appeared through a tear in the clouds.

‘Wasn’t me that said it,’ Tom muttered, wondering how Tromp’s horse was still walking beneath the fat man’s enormous bulk. ‘I could not care if the King gave all of England to the King of Spain.’

Tromp’s eyes bulged. From the corner of his own, Tom saw a flash of Penn’s teeth as he shook his head with incredulity.

‘Now now, Thomas, you’ll upset folk with talk like that,’ Captain Preston warned. ‘Mister Tromp might take you seriously.’

‘If it was in jest it was in poor taste,’ Tromp said, scowling as he turned back to face his front. They were making their way up the muddy road and had almost reached the messuages on Wormleighton’s western edge: some low thatched dwellings each with a garden, service buildings and animal pens. ‘He has an ill-favoured look, that one,’ Tromp added. ‘I would be wary of him, Captain.’

Tom ignored the indirect insult, but Penn did not. ‘I have a pretty friend who would disagree with you on that, Mister Tromp,’ he said, ‘isn’t that right, Tom?’ Tom thought of Ruth
Gell
, of the nights they had shared. ‘Poor girl,’ Penn went on, ‘but I believe she was in love with Tom in her way. Broke her ample heart to see her young warrior ride off to war, even if he does make a desolate Puritan like Trencher here seem a mirthful fellow.’ Trencher grunted something nasty. ‘Come to think of it, Mister Tromp, you are quite right, for I swear on my life it never rained so much before I met Black Tom.’

‘Quiet, Penn,’ Captain Preston said, raising his left hand. They were passing the first houses now, continuing up the gentle slope. A breeze was blowing up from the south, bringing with it a damp fog from the fields, that drifted in amongst the buildings and willow hurdles. This mist was thickened by spice-smelling wood smoke wafting up from one or more unseen dwellings beyond the southern slope.

An owl hooted and suddenly Tom was aware that his senses had pricked awake. The sweet, damp aroma of fallen leaves filled his nose and his ears sifted every sound: the horses’ snorts, the clink of equipment and the creak of saddles and leather buff-coats. Even the thump of his own heart. He felt a chill crawl up his spine, bristling the hairs on his neck. It was the same sense, he guessed, that had caused the captain to hush the column.

There was no sign of anyone moving in the autumn dusk, but that in itself was not so unusual. Most folk with any sense would make themselves scarce at the appearance of fifty armed and mounted troopers. No, it was something else that had whetted his instinct. But what?

He was aware of the pistols in his boots pressing against his outer calves. Of the rapier’s hilt at his left hip.

‘Who are you?’ a voice called from the murk. ‘State your business here.’

Captain Preston raised his hand again and stopped his horse, halting the entire column. He glanced at Lieutenant Hyde, then nodded, affirming his decision.

‘I am Captain Preston of Lord Feilding’s Regiment of Horse,
serving
the Earl of Essex and His Majesty’s Parliament,’ Preston called, straight-backed, peering ahead, searching for the body to which the voice belonged.

No reply came out of the gloom.

‘I don’t like this,’ Will Trencher murmured, drawing the great blunderbuss from its saddle holster.

‘On the left, Captain,’ Tom said.

‘What is it, Rivers?’ Preston asked, the strain of keeping his voice calm palpable in just those four words. But Tom had no answer, did not know what he had heard. Not heard. Felt.

‘Show yourselves!’ Captain Preston yelled.

Gouts of flame flashed, followed in an eye blink by a ragged salvo of cracks, and Lieutenant Hyde grunted and slumped forward and the horses whinnied and Tom gripped Achilles hard with his knees, trying to control the startled stallion as he drew both his pistols.

‘Behind us! They’re behind us!’ someone clamoured from the column’s rear, as more tongues of fire spat from the murk, illuminating men for an instant before the darkness reclaimed them. Men around Tom fired their own carbines and pistols but he could see no one to kill and so he held his fire.

‘Forward!’ Captain Preston roared, but then, suddenly, there was the enemy, charging out of the dark and screaming as they came. Captain Preston fired his carbine and Tom saw a man fall from his horse and then liquid slapped his face and he looked at the man beside him, at the gory, bone-flecked hole that had been Trooper Edwards’s face.

‘Heya!’ He spurred forward with his captain and there were more gouts of flame as the enemy cavalry emerged in a hateful wave and the two sides struck, horses and men screaming and blades flashing in the moonlight. A sword slashed at Tom, just missing his face, and he leant out quick as a lightning strike and thrust a pistol into a man’s face, pulling the trigger. The man’s head vanished, spraying Tom’s pistol and hand with hot fluid.
Captain
Preston hacked and slashed, his blade ringing against his opponent’s. Instinctively Tom ducked and flame spewed towards him and he heard the savage hiss as the ball whipped past and saw in the flash the whites of a horse’s wild eyes. Then he pointed his other pistol and fired and heard it pierce a breastplate and then the horse was riderless and he shoved his firelocks into his boots and hauled his sword rasping from its scabbard.

Quartermaster Tromp had drawn his own sword and was slashing about himself wildly, but then Tom saw at least two men drag the quartermaster screaming from his horse and Tom cursed because the enemy had infantry amongst them now too.

‘Heya, Achilles!’ he yelled, digging his heels in and driving the stallion forward towards Captain Preston, who was fending off two attackers with desperate sword work. One of the enemy riders sensed the danger and pulled his mount round just as Tom slashed at him, striking his breastplate. Then Will Trencher was there too, his blade flashing, and the Cavalier hauled on his reins and his horse stepped neatly backwards, disengaging them from the fray. Just as something hammered into Tom’s ribs, knocking the wind from him so that he gasped for breath. The musket butt came again, thumping into his left thigh, and Tom heard himself roar with pain even as he twisted and brought his rapier hissing out of the dark from his right and down across the musketeer’s face, cleaving it apart with a wet chop.

‘Quarter!’ someone yelled. ‘We surrender, damn you!’ Captain Preston was yet hacking a man to death even as he yelled for the killing to end. And with good reason, Tom knew. For now the enemy had broken from cover Tom could see a score or more musket matches glowing malevolently in the dark around them. If they were not cut from their horses they would be shot from them and now Captain Preston wanted to save his men’s lives. Those who still lived.

‘We surrender! It’s over, men!’ he bellowed. ‘Quarter, damn your eyes!’ he screamed at a musketeer who was raising his matchlock, its muzzle a mere two feet from Preston’s side.

Some more cracks split the night and Tom wheeled Achilles round in circles, his sword raised and yet hungry for blood, then he saw a musketeer and kicked Achilles forward, eager to cut the man down.

‘Hold, Tom! It’s over! Hold, man!’ It was Matthew Penn and he had bravely grabbed Achilles’s bridle to stop the beast; Achilles snapped his teeth but Penn held on, shouting for Tom to stop. Then Tom recognized his friend and hauled on his reins.

‘Whoa, boy, steady, Achilles,’ he growled, the words raspy as a raven’s call because his mouth was so dry. He glanced around at the carnage dimly illuminated in the cold moonlight. Bodies lay everywhere in a gloom curdled by the anguished screams of men and horses. Other bodies lay still. Riderless horses stamped or shied, their eyes rolling, and as Tom held his sword out before him he realized that he was trembling madly. Not fear. Just the battle thrill, he hoped. You have killed men, his conscience whispered, frayed as a banner whipped by a musket ball.

‘Put down your swords,’ Captain Preston ordered, handing his own weapon to an enemy officer while two musketeers trained their matchlocks on him. ‘All of you, weapons down.’

‘Down!’ a musketeer barked at Tom, his weapon aimed at Tom’s torso. The match clamped in the serpent glowed and Tom had the notion that if it had still been raining they might have escaped, because many of the enemy’s muskets would not fire in the wet. But the drizzle had stopped some time before they had entered the village and now all the man in front of him need do was pull the trigger. The serpent lock would lower the lit match into the priming pan, igniting the small charge there which would in turn ignite the main charge in the barrel through the touch-hole. There would be a flash and Tom would
hear
a crack but by then the lead ball would have already torn a hole through him.

‘We’re beaten, Tom,’ Penn said. ‘Do what the bastard says.’ And so as if in a dream Tom threw his sword point-first into the soft ground, then dismounted and stood amongst the dead and dying, his breath loud in his steel helmet.

‘Some must have got clear,’ Penn said, looking around. Twenty feet away Quartermaster Tromp lay bludgeoned to death, the whites of his bulging, terror-filled eyes striking against his gore-dark face.

‘Bloody ran and left us,’ Nayler said, holding his hands up as a Cavalier relieved him of his wheellock pistol and sword. Penn was right, Tom realized, for though there were plenty of dead there were not enough, and he guessed that at least twenty had broken clear and galloped west.

‘We might have won. Beaten these whoresons if they’d stayed,’ Will Trencher growled. His big mare lay bleeding out in the mud and he stood watching her die, blood dripping from a gash in his bald head.

A broad-shouldered, halberd-wielding corporal strode up to Tom and used his weapon’s butt to knock Tom’s helmet off into the mud. Then he spun the shortened halberd around and ran its slender wicked point along Tom’s neck until its crescent-shaped axe blade pressed into the flesh beneath his jaw. The corporal’s pot had a rim all the way round from whose shadow his eyes glared hatefully.

‘You rebel scum,’ he sneered into Tom’s face, gripping the halberd’s shaft with white-knuckled hands, ‘I’m going to slice your rancid head off.’ He spat, the phlegmy string catching in his beard where it glistened in the moonlight. ‘That man down there was my friend,’ he snarled, jerking his head towards the musketeer whose face Tom had sliced open. Tom glanced down at the blood-spattered ruin, his nostrils full of the stench of the musketeer’s open bowels. The corporal smelt it too, if the grimace on his face was anything to go by.

‘He stinks,’ Tom gnarred. ‘Or is it you who have fouled yourself?’

The axe blade at Tom’s throat twitched and Tom threw his right forearm up, knocking the blade clear, then stepped in and hammered a fist into the corporal’s mouth. The big man staggered and then Tom was on him, but the corporal tripped over his friend’s corpse and grabbed Tom’s tunic in one strong hand, pulling him down after him. The man had let go of his halberd and slammed a fist into Tom’s temple, exploding white light in Tom’s skull, but Tom’s hatred was stronger than pain and his fists were flying, slamming into the corporal’s face again and again, and he was vaguely aware that men were standing around them yelling, like a crowd round the bear pit. Somehow the corporal squirmed out and managed to twist his torso, throwing out his right hand and gripping Tom’s neck. The pressure was enormous and blackness began to flood Tom’s vision. He drove a fist into the corporal’s elbow joint and the arm collapsed and in the same instant Tom slammed his forehead into the big man’s face, breaking the corporal’s nose with a splintering crack. He wrenched his neck back and smashed his head down again. And again into the hot, blood-drenched mess.

‘That’ll do, rebel,’ someone said, swinging a leg over Tom’s back and wrapping two strong arms around his neck, all but suffocating him. ‘That’ll do or I’ll gut you, lad,’ the man threatened in his ear, slowly standing back up so that Tom must either stand with him or have his throat crushed.

‘Do what the man says, Tom,’ Captain Preston said. ‘They’ll murder you otherwise.’ But Tom had no choice in the matter and his vision began to blur as he struggled to drag breath into his lungs.

‘Don’t kill the lad, Bard,’ a Cavalier said, ‘the captain will want to question him.’

‘Easy, Tom,’ Matthew Penn said, ‘easy, lad.’

Tom could not breathe. He glared at the faces around him
and
they glared back, as though he were some wild animal caught in a snare. And then their faces blurred and he felt his limbs go slack. His knees buckled and the trooper called Bard lowered him onto the muddy ground. It was over.

And they had lost.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN